Writing Below the Current

Inspiration, Worldbuilding, and the Slow-Burn Heart

Every book starts somewhere weird. Here's where this one started.

The World Came First

I've always been drawn to the question of what environments do to people over time — how the world you live in shapes your mythology, your architecture, your sense of what a body is supposed to look like.

Trevort has twin suns and deep oceans, and I wanted those details to matter, not just as scenery but as something that gets under the skin of the people living there. The idea of metal replacing bone grew out of that — a world where physical alteration is so universal it's unremarkable, where what you're made of says something about your history and your access and what you've survived. It started as a worldbuilding detail and turned into one of the book's central metaphors before I fully realized what I was doing.

That's usually how it goes.

Building a World You Can't Map

I'll be honest: my worldbuilding process is more sensory than scientific. I'm not working from technical blueprints. I'm asking questions like — what does it feel like to arrive somewhere you weren't supposed to know existed? What sounds would you notice first? What would make you understand, without anyone telling you, that this place had been kept alive through sheer collective will?

The hidden city beneath Trevort's oceans isn't there because it's beautiful, though it is. It's there because it had to be. That's what I kept coming back to. A civilization that built itself into ancient ruins on the ocean floor, invisible from above, because there was no version of survival that didn't require disappearing. That context — the desperation underneath the architecture — is what makes it feel real to me.

The Slow Burn Was Non-Negotiable

I knew from the beginning that Coreni and Edi-Veen weren't going to fall into anything quickly. Partly because that's just not who Coreni is — she doesn't trust easily and she definitely doesn't trust a man who saved her life without explaining why. But also because I think slow burn, done right, lets readers earn the intimacy alongside the characters.

The moments I love most in their relationship are the small ones. A silence that holds. A choice made without explanation that still communicates everything. The romance in this book is built out of those accumulations, which mirrors what the book is really saying: trust isn't granted. It's constructed, carefully, under pressure, by people who have every reason not to bother.

Prophecy as Problem, Not Solution

Prophecies are a trap. I say this as someone who put one in the book. The temptation is to let it do narrative work for you — to use it as a shortcut to inevitability. I really didn't want to do that.

In Below the Current, the prophecy doesn't hand anyone anything. It creates pressure. It raises moral questions. It forces characters — especially Coreni — to decide whether to accept a role that was assigned before they were born, or to redefine what that role actually means. That tension is where the story lives. Destiny is only interesting when someone has to choose it.

Pacing the Reveals

This one was hard. You need enough unanswered questions to keep readers turning pages, but the payoffs have to feel earned — like the answer was there the whole time if you knew where to look. I layered clues into character behavior and setting detail, hoping that when the big truths landed, readers would feel the click of recognition alongside the surprise.

Whether I pulled it off is for you to decide. But I tried to write a book that rewards the careful reader while still being able to catch you off guard.

Writing Below the Current felt like listening — to the world, to the characters, to the question underneath everything: what happens when you stop running from who you're supposed to be?

I hope you get pulled beneath the surface. I hope you're glad you stayed.